Is the Ground Zero mosque about peace or is it a trophy for Islam?

Just call him “His Arrogance.” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, that is.

Any lingering doubt vanished on Aug. 6 when he declared that opponents of the planned mosque near Ground Zero “really ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

The pretentious one then analogized questioning the motives of the mosque’s prime movers to interrogating ordinary people about putting money in the collection basket at their churches.

This from a guy who, as the de-facto dictator of the city’s public school system, permits the display of the Islamic Star and Crescent during what is now generically referred to as the “Winter Season Holiday,” but hypocritically prohibits a similar display of the Nativity scene.

Bloomberg, of course, is the one who really ought to be ashamed of himself for his disgraceful insensitivity to the family and friends of the more than 2,700 people who were murdered by Muslim fanatics during the September 11, 2001 attacks on lower Manhattan.

In bondage to evil, they were conditioned to believe that the premeditated slaughter of innocent people put them on the fast track to the promised land.

For Bloomberg to base his support for the controversial mosque on First Amendment grounds is incongruous. Besides that little matter of the banned Nativity display, his own Metropolitan Transportation Authority nixed ads opposing the mosque on city buses until a federal lawsuit prompted a change of heart.

A lawyer with the group that initiated the suit noted that the MTA’s reversal was a victory not only for free speech but “against Mayor Bloomberg’s bullying.”

It’s also absurd that Bloomberg has chosen to seize - selectively - on the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion clause to justify condemning mosque opponents while, at the same time, ignoring the free speech guaranteed to them by that very same amendment.

Then there’s House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who, last week, actually called for an investigation of mosque opponents.

Addressing a San Francisco audience, she lamented that the first questions asked of her was about “a zoning issue in New York City.”

You got that? A zoning issue. And all the while you thought it had something to do with showing a modicum of respect for those whose lives were either snuffed out or changed forever by radical Islamic ambitions.

The mosque also got a boost from the Associated Press last week when it cautioned its reporters to refrain from characterizing the project as the “Ground Zero mosque” or “mosque at Ground Zero.”

This despite the fact that landing gear from one of the hijacked planes fell on the planned site.

CREEPING SHARIAH

In fact, the phrase “Ground Zero mosque” was initially used by Feisal Abdul Rauf, an Arab-American Sufi imam and the project’s chief promoter.

His expressed ambition is to “bring Shariah to America,” a formula for imposing Islamic law on this nation. For every person who discounts that possibility, this deadly serious enterprise inches closer to fruition.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich calls the phenomenon “creeping shariah,” the framework to accomplish the Muslim Brotherhood’s stated goal “to destroy Western civilization from within.”

On Friday, Aug. 13, President Obama, speaking at a White House gathering to celebrate the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, expressed his strong support for construction of the controversial mosque. Stating that “our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable,” he compared the opposition to bygone eras during which. he claimed, Catholic churches and synagogues encountered similar opposition.

Too bad nobody bothered to ask him to cite one comparable instance. Given the extraordinary nature of the attack on America by Muslim extremists, there are none. And that makes Obama’s remarks just plain dumb.

It is a matter of record that Muslims have repeatedly memorialized their victories by constructing mosques over the once-holy places of the “infidels.”

Examples include Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque, which sits atop the site of the Temple Mount, one of Judaism’s holiest sites, and the Cordoba Mosque in Spain, which was a former cathedral dedicated to St. Vincent.

While Muslims have a right to freedom of religion as protected by the First Amendment, so, too, do opponents have free-speech rights to oppose a project that is, at best, plainly insensitive and, at worst, would constitute yet another trophy for yet another Islamic triumph, a further desecration of those thousands of murdered Americans.

The trophy theory got a boost last week from Mahmoud al-Zahar, the co-founder of the Hamas terrorist movement, when he solemnly declared that Muslims “have to build” the mosque at the controversial site.

If backers of the mosque really just want a place to peaceably practice their religion, they’ll exhibit the kind of sensitivity and respect they want from others, and seek an alternate site.

If, however, in the face of opposition rooted in understandable anger and anguish, they persist in their demands that it be built at the contemplated location, then it’s clear what they really want is a trophy.

So, in the end, actions will speak much louder than words, even those uttered by Obama, Pelosi and Bloomberg.

[Daniel Leddy’s column appears each Tuesday on the Advance Editorial Page. His e-mail address is JudgeLeddy@si.rr.com.]